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Two things >It lights a fire under M$'s asses to make windows competitive >Adoption is slow but exponential. Today is the first day I learned about ReactOS an

Two things >It lights a fire under M$'s asses to make windows competitive >Adoption is slow but exponential. Today is the first day I learned about ReactOS and I'm excited. I can program and I have money. If people can find value in it, adoption will grow.

goatlover 9y ago
So it will become this is the year of ReactOS on the desktop?
DEFCON28 9y ago
Windows 10 is good (really!) if you haven't taken a look at in a while. I switched from Mac on the Desktop to Windows 10 because I needed "pro" hardware (NVIDIA GPU, 1 TB RAM, etc) and it works just fine. They've really been on the ball in the last couple of years.
- wincy 9y ago
  It’d be good if it didn’t have all the damned spam baked in with non obvious ways to remove it. I got so mad the FIFTH time windows 10 pro installed Bubble Witch Saga and Candy Crush on my system. After seeing that I really want to save up and buy only Macs from now on.
  - swiley 9y ago
    Why not just run a FOSS OS?
    - zitterbewegung 9y ago
      Hardware support of laptops for FOSS is not that good unless you restrict yourself to Dell or IBM.
      - pavs 9y ago
        Also has very good support on Lenovo (in my experience), which would make 3 of the largest PC/Laptop manufacturers in the world that has good linux support. Here is a list of certified vendors for Ubuntu: https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/ https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/
      - eitland 9y ago
        My HP laptops have also had zero problems running Linux for years.
      - as1mov 9y ago
        It hasn't been the case since a long time really. I have used it on enterprise HP and Lenovo laptops and everything works flawlessly.
      - Yetanfou 9y ago
        A strange argument: hardware support of laptops for MacOS is officially non-existent unless you restrict yourself to Apple. As soon as you're willing to consider 'Hackintosh' installations you should also consider Linux distributions as those are generally far easier to install and maintain.
      - orionblastar 9y ago
        IBM no longer makes desktop PC s or laptops. Sold the designs to Lenovo years ago. I had HP and Compaq laptops that ran Linux as well.
      - majewsky 9y ago
        That was true 5-10 years ago, these days it's much better (except for some old offenders like Nvidia GPUs or Broadcom WiFi modules). My Asus notebook never lacked any support even though I bought it just three days after that particular model was first released.
      - bwat49 9y ago
        While I would say that throwing linux on any random laptop and expecting perfect compatibility is foolhardy, it's really not that difficult to find a linux compatible laptop these days. In general if you stay away from anything too esoteric, and avoid hardware that needs proprietary drivers (e.g. nvidia graphics, broadcom wifi etc...) most things should work out of the box, but it's a good idea to do a bit of research on anything you're thinking of buying if linux compatibility is desired. There are also various smaller vendors like system76 that sell laptops with linux pre-installed.
    - p1necone 9y ago
      Not OP, but for me the only hurdle left is gaming compatibility.
    - wincy 9y ago
      A fair question, I actually did install two different Linux distributions a couple weeks ago. For some background I'm a software developer, and consider myself reasonably competent in using Linux. I started with Fedora. Installed, seemed nice. Then I did a dnf update or something like that. It froze for 4 hours in the middle of the install. So I hit ctrl+z. When I restarted my computer GRUB was attempting to boot an OS version that did not exist and I had to manually try to figure out how to fix this which I was in no mood to do after having the OS for 10 minutes. Also apparently the newest version of Fedora didn't have the concept of turning off auto lock? Or a timer. I'm not sure, but the end result was that if I tried to watch a movie for more than 10 minutes my desktop would helpfully lock, continuing to play the movie. So I then installed Ubuntu, which was fairly straightforward. Then deleted the couple of things that felt like advertisements (like a direct link to Amazon on the quickbar or whatever it is). Overall, was a pretty good experience until I installed the proprietary Nvidia drivers. Then for some reasons movies (DRM-free files) would stutter. At that point I was thinking about doing some C# development in visual studio anyway so I looked into dual boot installing windows 10 while having Ubuntu installed, and while there are a million articles on how to install Ubuntu with Windows 10 already installed, the reverse did not seem to be true. So I just wiped my system drive and reinstalled Windows 10, which helpfully activated based on my hardware profile even though I'd neglected to save the key.
      - Lorkki 9y ago
        Installing Windows first is just the recommended way to set up dual-boot, since the Windows installer will always overwrite the bootloader without asking any questions. I think these days there's an automated repair tool on the Ubuntu install media that'll take care of fixing it, though. And with Nvidia drivers it's usually a good idea to install the latest ones from the "graphics-drivers" repository (there should be plenty of guides for that too). Also, depending on what kind of C# development you do, VS Code can be very nice. DotNET Core is very straightforward to work with, and targeting the full frameworks with Mono is doable with a little bit of tweaking. If it's Unity, then the debugger plugin will be completely useless on Linux, and you'll have to use the very latest beta version of the editor.
      - Mononokay 9y ago
- mastazi 9y ago
  > Windows 10 is good Did Linux succeed because other UNIXes were bad? In my opinion, the reason why we need ReactOS is independent from whether Windows 10 is good or not. And yeah, I agree besides the privacy issues, Win 10 is pretty good
  - earenndil 9y ago
    Linux succeeded because bsd had legal issues.
    - bad_user 9y ago
      People like to bring that up, but Linux also succeeded because of an open development model that BSD lacked. Linus Tolvards is basically the poster boy of Open Source.
      - _o_ 9y ago
        For desktop, I use opensuse (just clarification, to avoid holly wars here). I have migrated my servers to FreeBSD not due to problems with kernel, but due to everything else, the distributions are really doing horrible job maintaining userspace, not to mention failures like systemd. Also trusting data to linux is an interesting ride, from btrfs failures to "merging" (pun intended) those failures to zfs (https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/7401 https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/7401). FreeBSD has much slower pace of development and this is good for stability. Zfs is rock solid beeing part of OS for decade, docker was ported to it in 14 days, due to jails which are there for 15 years+ and field tested for years (while I was listening from linux guys years that chroot is all you need). I wont complain about linux features, but for BSD, I know that after update everything will work exactly like it worked before and this is more important for my bussiness than all the bleading edge features. And then you have all the other issues that Linus explains here, for debian but same problems other distributions have (and yeah, I am just a bit younger and highly proficient in c/c++ on multiple operating systems, developing system level application for more then 20 years, that is probably why I share his opinion): https://youtu.be/1Mg5_gxNXTo?t=459 https://youtu.be/1Mg5_gxNXTo?t=459 Linux has succeeded as it was fast by cutting corners in development. And it worked for a while, now problems started to stockpile and turtle is starting to catch up. Regarding the "open model", I don't understand what would that be, BSD license is more permissive than GPL? Not to mention a shame when (https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-beats-internal-legal-threat/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-beats-internal-legal-thr...) kernel developer for linux started suing companies not releasing the source code. Just to wrap it up, if ReactOS will be able to keep the pace of development with the Windows changes it has a good chance that the year of ReactOS on desktop will be much sooner than the year of Linux on desktop. And this is what we want, not Linux OS on desktop but Open source OS on desktop, right?
- kbenson 9y ago
  It is good. The privacy concerns are real though.
- gregmac 9y ago
  ..once you fix a few things [1]: > This Windows 10 Setup Script turns off a bunch of unnecessary Windows 10 telemetery, bloatware, & privacy things. Not guaranteed to catch everything. Review and tweak before running. Reboot after running. Scripts for reversing are included and commented. [1] https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1 https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1
  - AstralStorm 9y ago
    Very guaranteed to not turn off Cortana in fact. Goodbye 300 MB of RAM.
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
  I use Fedora on the desktop but keep a copy of Windows 10 in VirtualBox for times when I need to use Photoshop (I'm a web developer) or some other Windows-only tool. I recently updated to the "Creators Update" and couldn't believe the amount of shit that popped up after the install asking me pointless questions, trying to integrate with things, trying to get me to activate OneDrive etc. It's not just post-install either, this stuff pops up when you're in the middle of something else! The thing I like most about Gnome is how it just stays out of the way. I don't use my OS, I use the applications I have installed. The shell should provide an optimal environment for them to run in and an easy way to launch them - and nothing else. Don't get me wrong, I've been a fan of Windows for a long time and 10 is the best version for years, but the popular Linux distros and macOS seem to do a better job of staying out of the way of the user. I think Microsoft are losing track with all the "value added" stuff they're constantly trying to foist on people - and don't even get me started on the tracking.
__sr__ 9y ago
>It lights a fire under M$'s asses to make windows competitive Err... no. Not unless the installed base reaches a critical mass. And certainly not when the market share is not even 0.1%. macOS (or even desktop Linux) has a higher installed base and they don’t bother Microsoft significantly. I’d be more optimistic if the OS had not been around for two decades. It had its chance when the likes of Vista was released. If it didn’t make a dent back then, it is not going to make one now - especially since Windows is at its best in terms of usability. Sure there are concerns about privacy, but those didn’t prevent Google from acquiring a (almost) monopoly in mobile market. Microsoft’s own attempts went nowhere — and they have infinitely deeper pockets compared to people behind ReactOS. And even if it does gain momentum, I am fairly sure that Microsoft will find a a way to sue them into oblivion.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  > (or even desktop Linux) has a higher installed base and they don’t bother Microsoft significantly. Except for they did. I'm pretty sure WSL was about developers who had preferred GNU/Linux-based systems (or macOS, since it can be compatible for some cases) for work, not about just running some *nix server software on Windows machines.
  - __sr__ 9y ago
    I said “significantly” — macOS and Linux have existed for ages, yet Microsoft is starting with WSL just now. Also, as far as I know, WSL is a by-product of the Poject Astoria - not something Microsoft set out to do. They probably thought, “We’ve done most of the work anyway, might as well get something out of it.”

goatlover 9y ago

So it will become this is the year of ReactOS on the desktop?

DEFCON28 9y ago

Windows 10 is good (really!) if you haven't taken a look at in a while. I switched from Mac on the Desktop to Windows 10 because I needed "pro" hardware (NVIDIA GPU, 1 TB RAM, etc) and it works just fine. They've really been on the ball in the last couple of years.

wincy 9y ago
It’d be good if it didn’t have all the damned spam baked in with non obvious ways to remove it. I got so mad the FIFTH time windows 10 pro installed Bubble Witch Saga and Candy Crush on my system. After seeing that I really want to save up and buy only Macs from now on.
- swiley 9y ago
  Why not just run a FOSS OS?
  - zitterbewegung 9y ago
    Hardware support of laptops for FOSS is not that good unless you restrict yourself to Dell or IBM.
    - pavs 9y ago
      Also has very good support on Lenovo (in my experience), which would make 3 of the largest PC/Laptop manufacturers in the world that has good linux support. Here is a list of certified vendors for Ubuntu: https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/ https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/
    - eitland 9y ago
      My HP laptops have also had zero problems running Linux for years.
    - as1mov 9y ago
      It hasn't been the case since a long time really. I have used it on enterprise HP and Lenovo laptops and everything works flawlessly.
    - Yetanfou 9y ago
      A strange argument: hardware support of laptops for MacOS is officially non-existent unless you restrict yourself to Apple. As soon as you're willing to consider 'Hackintosh' installations you should also consider Linux distributions as those are generally far easier to install and maintain.
    - orionblastar 9y ago
      IBM no longer makes desktop PC s or laptops. Sold the designs to Lenovo years ago. I had HP and Compaq laptops that ran Linux as well.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      That was true 5-10 years ago, these days it's much better (except for some old offenders like Nvidia GPUs or Broadcom WiFi modules). My Asus notebook never lacked any support even though I bought it just three days after that particular model was first released.
    - bwat49 9y ago
      While I would say that throwing linux on any random laptop and expecting perfect compatibility is foolhardy, it's really not that difficult to find a linux compatible laptop these days. In general if you stay away from anything too esoteric, and avoid hardware that needs proprietary drivers (e.g. nvidia graphics, broadcom wifi etc...) most things should work out of the box, but it's a good idea to do a bit of research on anything you're thinking of buying if linux compatibility is desired. There are also various smaller vendors like system76 that sell laptops with linux pre-installed.
  - p1necone 9y ago
    Not OP, but for me the only hurdle left is gaming compatibility.
  - wincy 9y ago
    A fair question, I actually did install two different Linux distributions a couple weeks ago. For some background I'm a software developer, and consider myself reasonably competent in using Linux. I started with Fedora. Installed, seemed nice. Then I did a dnf update or something like that. It froze for 4 hours in the middle of the install. So I hit ctrl+z. When I restarted my computer GRUB was attempting to boot an OS version that did not exist and I had to manually try to figure out how to fix this which I was in no mood to do after having the OS for 10 minutes. Also apparently the newest version of Fedora didn't have the concept of turning off auto lock? Or a timer. I'm not sure, but the end result was that if I tried to watch a movie for more than 10 minutes my desktop would helpfully lock, continuing to play the movie. So I then installed Ubuntu, which was fairly straightforward. Then deleted the couple of things that felt like advertisements (like a direct link to Amazon on the quickbar or whatever it is). Overall, was a pretty good experience until I installed the proprietary Nvidia drivers. Then for some reasons movies (DRM-free files) would stutter. At that point I was thinking about doing some C# development in visual studio anyway so I looked into dual boot installing windows 10 while having Ubuntu installed, and while there are a million articles on how to install Ubuntu with Windows 10 already installed, the reverse did not seem to be true. So I just wiped my system drive and reinstalled Windows 10, which helpfully activated based on my hardware profile even though I'd neglected to save the key.
    - Lorkki 9y ago
      Installing Windows first is just the recommended way to set up dual-boot, since the Windows installer will always overwrite the bootloader without asking any questions. I think these days there's an automated repair tool on the Ubuntu install media that'll take care of fixing it, though. And with Nvidia drivers it's usually a good idea to install the latest ones from the "graphics-drivers" repository (there should be plenty of guides for that too). Also, depending on what kind of C# development you do, VS Code can be very nice. DotNET Core is very straightforward to work with, and targeting the full frameworks with Mono is doable with a little bit of tweaking. If it's Unity, then the debugger plugin will be completely useless on Linux, and you'll have to use the very latest beta version of the editor.
    - Mononokay 9y ago
mastazi 9y ago
> Windows 10 is good Did Linux succeed because other UNIXes were bad? In my opinion, the reason why we need ReactOS is independent from whether Windows 10 is good or not. And yeah, I agree besides the privacy issues, Win 10 is pretty good
- earenndil 9y ago
  Linux succeeded because bsd had legal issues.
  - bad_user 9y ago
    People like to bring that up, but Linux also succeeded because of an open development model that BSD lacked. Linus Tolvards is basically the poster boy of Open Source.
    - _o_ 9y ago
      For desktop, I use opensuse (just clarification, to avoid holly wars here). I have migrated my servers to FreeBSD not due to problems with kernel, but due to everything else, the distributions are really doing horrible job maintaining userspace, not to mention failures like systemd. Also trusting data to linux is an interesting ride, from btrfs failures to "merging" (pun intended) those failures to zfs (https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/7401 https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/issues/7401). FreeBSD has much slower pace of development and this is good for stability. Zfs is rock solid beeing part of OS for decade, docker was ported to it in 14 days, due to jails which are there for 15 years+ and field tested for years (while I was listening from linux guys years that chroot is all you need). I wont complain about linux features, but for BSD, I know that after update everything will work exactly like it worked before and this is more important for my bussiness than all the bleading edge features. And then you have all the other issues that Linus explains here, for debian but same problems other distributions have (and yeah, I am just a bit younger and highly proficient in c/c++ on multiple operating systems, developing system level application for more then 20 years, that is probably why I share his opinion): https://youtu.be/1Mg5_gxNXTo?t=459 https://youtu.be/1Mg5_gxNXTo?t=459 Linux has succeeded as it was fast by cutting corners in development. And it worked for a while, now problems started to stockpile and turtle is starting to catch up. Regarding the "open model", I don't understand what would that be, BSD license is more permissive than GPL? Not to mention a shame when (https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-beats-internal-legal-threat/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-beats-internal-legal-thr...) kernel developer for linux started suing companies not releasing the source code. Just to wrap it up, if ReactOS will be able to keep the pace of development with the Windows changes it has a good chance that the year of ReactOS on desktop will be much sooner than the year of Linux on desktop. And this is what we want, not Linux OS on desktop but Open source OS on desktop, right?
kbenson 9y ago
It is good. The privacy concerns are real though.
gregmac 9y ago
..once you fix a few things [1]: > This Windows 10 Setup Script turns off a bunch of unnecessary Windows 10 telemetery, bloatware, & privacy things. Not guaranteed to catch everything. Review and tweak before running. Reboot after running. Scripts for reversing are included and commented. [1] https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1 https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1
- AstralStorm 9y ago
  Very guaranteed to not turn off Cortana in fact. Goodbye 300 MB of RAM.
SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
I use Fedora on the desktop but keep a copy of Windows 10 in VirtualBox for times when I need to use Photoshop (I'm a web developer) or some other Windows-only tool. I recently updated to the "Creators Update" and couldn't believe the amount of shit that popped up after the install asking me pointless questions, trying to integrate with things, trying to get me to activate OneDrive etc. It's not just post-install either, this stuff pops up when you're in the middle of something else! The thing I like most about Gnome is how it just stays out of the way. I don't use my OS, I use the applications I have installed. The shell should provide an optimal environment for them to run in and an easy way to launch them - and nothing else. Don't get me wrong, I've been a fan of Windows for a long time and 10 is the best version for years, but the popular Linux distros and macOS seem to do a better job of staying out of the way of the user. I think Microsoft are losing track with all the "value added" stuff they're constantly trying to foist on people - and don't even get me started on the tracking.

__sr__ 9y ago

>It lights a fire under M$'s asses to make windows competitive Err... no. Not unless the installed base reaches a critical mass. And certainly not when the market share is not even 0.1%. macOS (or even desktop Linux) has a higher installed base and they don’t bother Microsoft significantly. I’d be more optimistic if the OS had not been around for two decades. It had its chance when the likes of Vista was released. If it didn’t make a dent back then, it is not going to make one now - especially since Windows is at its best in terms of usability. Sure there are concerns about privacy, but those didn’t prevent Google from acquiring a (almost) monopoly in mobile market. Microsoft’s own attempts went nowhere — and they have infinitely deeper pockets compared to people behind ReactOS. And even if it does gain momentum, I am fairly sure that Microsoft will find a a way to sue them into oblivion.

drdaeman 9y ago
> (or even desktop Linux) has a higher installed base and they don’t bother Microsoft significantly. Except for they did. I'm pretty sure WSL was about developers who had preferred GNU/Linux-based systems (or macOS, since it can be compatible for some cases) for work, not about just running some *nix server software on Windows machines.
- __sr__ 9y ago
  I said “significantly” — macOS and Linux have existed for ages, yet Microsoft is starting with WSL just now. Also, as far as I know, WSL is a by-product of the Poject Astoria - not something Microsoft set out to do. They probably thought, “We’ve done most of the work anyway, might as well get something out of it.”